From Mondego To Sado, Stopping All The While
There Was Once a Slave

«(…)
As he continued south, the traveller was worried by the memory of that hotel. The cliff was no doubt strong, but could it really withstand such a monstrosity? His worry was not so much over the weight of the building, but the right that any honourable stone has not to have to bear such an unbearable physical and moral weight on its tired shoulders. Then the traveller remembers where he is headed, and gives a sigh of both relief and apprehension. He has yet to visit Ericeira, and enjoy the painted ceiling beams of the church there, and then beyond it the monastery of Mafra, which he can already see so clearly in the distance that he can almost count the windows in the façade. There is no way the traveller can avoid it. He advances feeling hypnotised, incapable of thought. And when he finally gets out of his car, and sees the distance he still has to go to the vestibule of the church, the grand stairway, and the atrium, he almost faints, But then he recalls Fernão Mendes Pinto, who travelled to such distant lands often along such awful roads, and with this example in mind, swings his knapsack on his back and sets off in heroic mood.
The monastery of Mafra is big. Big is the monastery of Mafra. Mafra's big monastery. Three ways of saying it, and there could be many more, all of which could be resumed in the simple phrase: the monastery of Mafra is big. It may seem a joke, but the traveller is at a loss as to how to come to grips with this façade more than 200 metres in width, an overall area of 40,000 square metres, with its 4,500 doors and windows, its 88 rooms, the 62-metre-high towers, the turrets, the dome of the basilica. The traveller searches anxiously for a guide, and clutches on to him like a drowning man. The guides at Mafra must be very used to this. They are patient, they don't raise their voices, they treat their charges with great care, aware of the challenges awaiting them. They miss many rooms, doors and windows, leave out whole wings of the palace, and only give the strictly necessary information so as not to overwhelm the brain or the heart. The traveller saw the atrium, and all the statues brought from Italy: they may well be masterpieces - who is the traveller to say - but they leave him absolutely cold. And the basilica, which is vast but seems to lack the proper proportions, does nothing to warm him either.
There have been plenty of saints already during this journey, but here there are more of them than all the rest put together. In village churches and in larger ones, the traveller saw half a dozen saints celebrated, and he celebrated as well, praising them and even believing in their proclaimed miracles. Above all, he saw they had shown love. The traveller has been moved by many imperfect images, and felt deep emotion over many other perfect works of art, but in Mafra the St Bartholomew in stone displaying his flayed skin causes him an indefinable sense of repugnance. The statues at Mafra are for religious fanatics, not simple believers.
The guide's words buzz like wasps. He knows from experience what he has to do to put the visitors to sleep, how to anaesthetise them. The traveller is so confused he thanks him for it. By now they have left the basilica, they climb an endless staircase, and he can remember vaguely that they saw (how on earth does the guide survive all this?) Dona María's apartment, in richest imperial style, the hunting-trophies room, the reception room, the friars' infirmary, the kitchen, this room, that room, room upon room upon room. Now it's the library: 83 metres long, books which are so high up they can hardly be made out, let alone touched to see what stories they are telling; the guide hurries on, and soon it's time to leave. Then it's back to the basilica, this time seen from a high window, and the traveller only keeps up out of politeness. The guide looks pale, and the traveller realises he must be made of the same clay as other mortals, he must get dizzy, have sleepless nights and suffer from indigestion. It's no easy thing to be a guide at Mafra.
The traveller escaped out into the street. Thank goodness, the sky was blue, the sun was shining, and there was even a refreshing breeze blowing.
The traveller slowly came back to life. In order to recover completely, he visited the church of St Andrew, the monastery's oldest victim. It is a pure and beautiful late thirteenth-century building, and the harmonious encounter between its Romanesque and Gothic elements comes as a sheer relief. Beauty is not dead.

Paradise Encountered

On the Ericeira road the traveller finally turned back, after reaching the northernmost point on the bend of the River Cheleiros, and headed south. The roads here are rather erratic: they spring up with the firm intention of serving all the tiniest villages in the region, but they never take the shortest route: they meander up and down hills, completely losing their head when they spot the Serra of Sintra in the distance. This wouldn't be a problem if the sierra had been the traveller's immediate goal: it is so obviously in front of him that any of them would do. But before that there is a hamlet called Janas, famed for the chapel of San Mamede which has a rare circular layout, and so the traveller made the necessary detour. He did not regret it.

(…)

All roads lead to Sintra. The traveller has already chosen his. He will go round by Azenhas do Mar and Praia das Maçãs, and take a look first at the houses cascading down from the clifftop, then the sandy beach lashed by the ocean waves; but he must admit he did all this without much enthusiasm, as if he could sense the sierra behind him, asking over his shoulder: “What's keeping you?” The same question must have been heard in that other paradise when the Creator was messing about with the clay before he created Adam.

On this side of the sierra, he first comes to Monserrate. But which Monserrate? The oriental palace, inspired by the moguls, now in a state of ruin, or the park that sweeps down from the road into the valley? The fragility of stucco, or the exuberance of vegetation? The traveller takes the first path he comes to, goes down the uneven steps that penetrate the foliage, the deep-green avenues, and finds himself in the kingdom of silence. It is true that there are birds singing, and every now and then some creature crawls through the undergrowth, a leaf falls or a bee goes buzzing by, but these are the sounds of silence. Tall trees rise on both sides of the valley, the tree ferns have thick trunks, and at the very bottom of the valley where streams flow, there are plants with huge, spiky leaves under which a fully grown man could stand to protect himself from the sun. Waterlilies abound on small lakes, and every so often a dull thud startles the traveller: it's a dry pine cone falling from a branch to the forest floor-

Up above stands the palace. From afar, it still has a certain grandeur. The round turrets with their characteristic lintels catch the eye, and the moulding of the arches is softened by distance. Close to, it saddens the traveller: this English folly, paid for by the cloth trade, and Victorian in its inspiration, shows how fleeting all revivals are. The palace is being restored, which is all to the good: Portugal has more than enough ruins. But even when it is fully restored, and open to the public, it will still be what it has always been: a monument to an age that had every taste imaginable, but never really defined any of them. These nineteenth-century architectures are usually imported, and are eclectic to the point of eccentricity. As empires dominated the world economically, they amused themselves with alien cultures. And this was always also the first sign of their decadence.

From the palace verandah, the traveller looks down at the mass of vegetation below. He already knew the land was fertile: he is more than familiar with wheatfields and pine forests, with orchards and olive groves, but it is only here that he realises that this fertility can reveal itself with such serene force, like a pregnant womb nourishing itself on what it is creating. Just by placing his hand on this trunk, or dipping it into a water-tank, or touching a fallen moss-covered statue, or closing his eyes and listening to the subterranean murmuring of roots. And the sun completes all of this. A small push from the trees would lift the entire earth all towards it. The traveller can feel the vertigo of the great cosmic winds. To make sure he will not be cast out of this paradise, he retraces his steps, counts the tree ferns and discovers a new one, and departs thinking that perhaps the earth will not come to an end so soon after all.»